Me and my friend just got into a 10 minute long argument over how fast explosive weapon travel speeds should be to prevent them from becoming useless after a few dozen inches against anything fast enough to get out of the way.
The rulebook currently has explosive weapons travel at a fixed rate of 12 inches per turn, regardless of explosive size, whether there's anything actively propelling the explosive like a rocket motor or external interference, or whether the projectile is guided or not.
For instance, my friend decided to fire a Size 3" mortar (12" range, but our houserule gives ranged weapons 3x the range they'd have without the rule, giving 36" range) at my hero (7" move, plus 1d10 sprint) at maximum range. Even if the mortar shells were Xs3 and not Xs1, there would still be an inch to spare when escaping the blast radius, assuming I stayed stationary the entire time and let my hero be shelled the entire game. If it was a normal infantry squad with only 5" move and 1d6 sprint, outrunning the mortar shell would be laughably easy.
From what I can tell, explosive weapons were balanced as strictly anti-structure weapons past 12 inches, whether the explosive launcher is a 2" man portable mortar or a 10" artillery bunker buster, seeing as almost all structures have a move stat of 2".
It looks like the only other option for delivering explosive payloads is a Launcher (range wsx6", use ws+2", max payload size=half wsize) which presumably also suffers from payload velocity issues, so at that point you might as well use regular guns, which have 2 extra inches of range compared to a cannon of equivalent size and the ability to hit instantly at the cost of reduced damage and no arc fire (but you'll get a lot more damage dice that hit since they can't be evaded without failing the action roll), and even if your enemy forgets to move units away from the target area, there's still the chance of missing due to an action roll.
Maybe payload launchers could be buffed to have additional velocity scaling with weapon size, so anything reasonably fast with a sufficiently long ranged weapon can't kite artillery without fear of retaliation after taking out non-payload weapons.
Explosive weapon travel time
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- Bragallot
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Re: Explosive weapon travel time
I'm very confused.
If it's your turn and you fire, the weapon should hit before the other guy has time to move, these weapons don't hit on the next turn or travel across multiple turns, do they? Only artillery strikes called in by one of those specialist minifigs do.
Structures have a move stat of 2"? Structures don't move at all, that would make them vehicles.
And are you suggesting normal minifigs have an easier time outrunning the blast even than Heroes even though they're slower?
If it's your turn and you fire, the weapon should hit before the other guy has time to move, these weapons don't hit on the next turn or travel across multiple turns, do they? Only artillery strikes called in by one of those specialist minifigs do.
Structures have a move stat of 2"? Structures don't move at all, that would make them vehicles.
And are you suggesting normal minifigs have an easier time outrunning the blast even than Heroes even though they're slower?
Re: Explosive weapon travel time
fine let me simplify thisBragallot wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 4:15 amI'm very confused.
If it's your turn and you fire, the weapon should hit before the other guy has time to move, these weapons don't hit on the next turn or travel across multiple turns, do they? Only artillery strikes called in by one of those specialist minifigs do.
Structures have a move stat of 2"? Structures don't move at all, that would make them vehicles.
And are you suggesting normal minifigs have an easier time outrunning the blast even than Heroes even though they're slower?
turn 1a: player A fires fuckoff artillery gun (size 20" cannon, xsize 10) at player B's giant robot (move 10") located 50" away. the cannon shell is 38" away from the robot
turn 1b: player B moves his giant robot 10" away from its previous position
turn 2a: player A does other things. the cannon shell is 26" away from the robot's original position.
turn 2b: player B moves his giant robot a further 10 inches away, putting it on the edge of the incoming cannon shell's blast radius
turn 3a: player A realizes that no roll would stop the giant robot from evading his cannon fire. the shell is 14" inches away from the robot's orginal position.
turn 3b: player B moves his giant robot 10 inches, again. he is now within range with his robot's weapons, and destroys the fuckoff artillery gun.
turn 4a: the cannon shell is 2" away from the robot's original position. at this point, anything with movement capability has exited the 20" blast radius.
turn 4b: player A regrets investing all his unit inches into artillery units
turn 5a: an explosion goes off somewhere forgotten
- ninja_bait
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Re: Explosive weapon travel time
Just make the explosives move faster if it's more appropriate to the scale of the battle. The explosive damage rules can make them too devastating if they don't have some high risk downsides.
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- ninja_bait
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Re: Explosive weapon travel time
FYI this is sort of the origin of the rule: viewtopic.php?p=350397#p350397
I make apocalypses and apocalypse accessories.
Re: Explosive weapon travel time
I'll be seeing how well a big eff-off artillery cannon works this weekend, so I'll finally have a vote to add to this. Planning on using it partially as area denial, by dropping massive fire field effects to box things in, then dropping actual explosions and such. My current thoughts on it is that being able to plop a 6d10 explosion anywhere on the table without consequence or response would be way too OP, though.